E&OE ………………………………………………………………………
Well thank you very much Malcolm. To Peter Smedley, to Barry Jones, the National President of the Australian Labor Party, John Brumby, Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, many other leaders and contributors to the corporate and community life of the Australian nation.
I’m especially pleased to be here tonight. I am pleased to be here because I believe that Care has been a great humanitarian organisation that has done an enormous amount over the years to relieve the suffering of mankind. It has become almost by dint of the terrible experience of Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace and Branko Yelan, has become almost a household name amongst the humanitarian organisations. And I don’t say that just to single out that event as being the only thing that would bring Care to the attention of the Australian community. And of course there are many other organisations and I don’t seek in any way to unfavorably compare their contribution to humanitarian work.
And I’m also delighted to be here tonight because in launching the Corporate Council I am associating myself very enthusiastically with the notion of what I have called the social coalition. And that is based on a belief that the goals we want to achieve in our community can’t be achieved by the individual sectors of our community operating in isolation. The business community in its prosperity and its wealth is vital to the economic growth of our nation and the employment of its people. The social welfare sector, the volunteer section of which Care is an outstanding example is absolutely indispensable to building the sort of humanitarian society we want, not only here in Australia, but around the world.
The Government has its part to play in providing the social security safety net, and also contributing to and supporting the work of organisations such as Care and of course the millions of generous-hearted, philanthropic Australian individuals, the volunteers and Australia is a great volunteer societies of the world. That’s a very important part of our community as well. And what we need is to bring all of those elements together, each contributing what it can do best.
And tonight I think is a fine example of that. It represents a contribution by the corporate sector, not only to the work of Care, but also to explaining and communicating to the rest of the Australian business community the importance to it as well as the importance to the Australian community of partnerships with organisations such as Care.
Malcolm has outlined the disparities in our world between the rich and the poor and it remains a constant challenge of our society, not only here in Australia but around the world, to do what we can in our time, and with our current responsibilities to try and close that gap. I am delighted to say that once again the Australian Government has reaccredited Care as one of the volunteer organisations, aid organisations that we would want to assist. We will be contributing a sum this year of $5 million to the work of the organisation.
And it takes its place along with a number of other remarkable humanitarian organisations that have contributed so much. And the record of care in areas of suffering, in Africa, in Europe, in Latin America, in Asia – the record of Care is a very fine example. It’s an organisation along with many others that has inspired not only the career commitment of many fine young Australian men and women, but it’s also an organisation that has inspired the volunteer efforts of many around the world.
I have some experience directly in relation to Australia’s involvement in East Timor to understand in a very real way the contribution made by volunteer organisations and humanitarian organisations. And although the military involvement of Australia was crucial and the political involvement and the political commitment was crucial to the very positive outcome achieved in that territory, the work of the humanitarian organisations in East Timor was absolutely indispensable to delivering the kind of outcomes that we want.
There will never be a shortage of need, there will always be a demand for the humanitarian work that Care represents. And what tonight does is to send a very strong signal through the contribution and the leadership of people such as Peter Smedley and many other prominent men and women in the Australian business community who are here tonight, it sends a signal to their fellow business men and women that it is part of not only good business, but it is part of good citizenship and is part of full participation in the humanitarian goal that business organisations, companies, participate and assist organisations such as Care.
I’ve said on a number of occasions over recent months that if I looked at the experience of the past twenty or thirty years, not only here in Australia, but also around the rest of the industrialised world you can see almost a pattern. There was a time when people believed that every problem could be solved by massive government involvement and massive government intervention. We saw that that didn’t work because it wasn’t all that efficient because governments are good at some things, but they’re pretty poor and pretty inefficient at others. And then we saw something perhaps of an overreaction, too great a retreat from that and there was a rather naïve belief that if you had the unrestrained forces of pure economic rationalism you’d have some kind of miraculous trickle down effect and everything would be solved as a result of that. I think we’ve begun to see that that doesn’t work entirely in its pure, undiluted form either. And we’re now seeing in the early part of the twenty-first century a recognition that we need a new parternship, a new coalition if you like, recognising that governments are good at some things, very good. You need governments for basic social security safety nets, you need governments to facilitate, you need governments to provide structures and securities.
Business is good at so many things. Volunteer organisations are not only wonderful for the humanitarian work they do, but also the policy understanding that they bring to particular challenges. And of course we will always need the zeal and commitment and enthusiasm and energy of individual Australians.
Ladies and gentlemen I am particularly pleased to be here tonight, to commend the Corporate Council, to commend in particular Peter Smedley, his work as the Chairman of the Council is something that we should respect, and support very warmly. And can I also take the opportunity tonight, Malcolm, in paying tribute to you for the work that you have done for a number of years as Chairman of Care. You have committed a great deal of your time and energy to humanitarian work, I respect you for that. Your former political colleagues on both sides of the parliament respect you for that. You are being in your post-political years a great contributor to Australian society in that work and you deserve the support and the respect of those who care about the relief of suffering around the world for that contribution.
To all of you men and women of the Australian business community whose organisations, be it Qantas or Mallesons, or News Limited, or Colonial or all of the other organisations that are here tonight, I thank you most warmly and I commend you for what you are doing. It is a great cause and I commend you very warmly for the message that you are communicating to your fellow men and women in Australian business.
Thank you.
[ends]